1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to computerized extracting of scheduling information from an e-mail, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for computerized extracting of scheduling information from a natural language e-mail for automatic entry into an electronic calendar.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Electronic devices are often used to help with personal organization. Calendars are often used to help us remember important dates in the future. Electronic calendar applications allow users to set events and alarms for particular dates and times in the future and automatically remind the user of the event.
Electronic mail (e-mail) has also become an important part of todays modern society. People use e-mail to keep in touch with family and friends as well as to conduct business correspondence. E-mail often contains information about scheduling events that users will want to put in a personal calendar application. Examples of such events include: meetings, conferences, seminars, appointments, engagements, deadlines, etc. FIG. 1 shows an example e-mail 100 containing scheduling information relating to a business presentation.
Upon reception of the e-mail 100, in order to remember the dates and times, the information listed for each event must be added to the calendar application. Because the e-mail 10 is a natural language (English) e-mail and does not follow a specific format recognized by the calendar application, the user must manually enter each event into the calendar. This is a time consuming and error prone operation. A need exists for an automatic agent that can help the user extract scheduling information from a natural language e-mail and directly export it to a calendar application.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,035,278, Mansour describes a meeting scheduling tool provided for a user to search for an unscheduled time block, setup a meeting for the time block, and manage the schedule arrangement. The meeting scheduling tool can be connected to an e-mail system, however, this is only for notification purposes of meetings configured using the scheduling tool and does not address the method of gathering scheduling information from an incoming e-mail.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,094,681, Shaffer, et al. describe an automated event notification apparatus including a data filter capable of analyzing data contained in e-mail messages, scheduling updates and requests transmitted to an electronic calendar of computer, and scheduling reminders transmitted by the electronic calendar. However, the automated event notification apparatus simply uses the data filter to determine whether an event has occurred or not. If the event has occurred, a user is notified using one of a plurality of notification methods. There is no provision for extracting information from scheduling updates other than to check for whether a certain event has occurred. The data filter makes a binary decision, and the event is determined to have either occurred or not occurred.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,272,532, Feinleib describes a centralized electronic reminder system for parsing received e-mail messages to create reminder electronic messages. Natural language e-mails are received, parsed, and reminder information is extracted. When the date matches a date specified in the reminder information, the electronic reminder system constructs an e-message which is sent to a recipient specified in the reminder information. Although the electronic reminder system uses natural language e-mails, there is no ability to extract scheduling information from the e-mails to export to a personal calendar application. Additionally no detailed information is disclosed for a suitable method of parsing the e-mail to extract the desired scheduling information.
In published U.S. patent application No. 20020174185, Jai, et al. describe a centralized system for capturing electronic data by parsing incoming e-mail header and data content and, depending on the type of the e-mail, selectively extracting data from the e-mail and forwarding the extracted data according to user preferences. Although the system can use various formats and types of e-mails, there is no ability for a user to extract scheduling information from the e-mails to automatically export to a personal calendar application. Additionally, there is again no detailed information disclosed for a suitable method of parsing the e-mail to extract desired scheduling information.
The patents listed above do not help a user extract scheduling information and input the scheduling information to a calendar application located at the users location. Furthermore, there is a need for a suitable parsing method for natural language e-mails to allow scheduling information contained in the e-mail to be properly extracted.